The facts
The Transportation Security Administration launched Gateside by TSA PreCheck, a program that lets eligible PreCheck members and other Known Traveler Number holders pass through security without a plane ticket. TSA says the point is gate-side welcomes, send-offs, layovers, dining, and shopping. After September 11, 2001, access past checkpoints was generally limited to ticketed passengers, with airline gate passes as the exception.
The pass is free. You apply online at least one day and no more than three days before the visit and need approval first. It is good for one calendar day, with reentry that day. Kids go on a parent or guardian's application. No acceptable ID, and TSA ConfirmID is $45 with no guarantee.
The first 13 airports include Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas-Fort Worth, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas (Harry Reid), Detroit, Columbus, Indianapolis, Wichita, Phoenix-Mesa Gateway, Little Rock (Clinton), Oklahoma City (Will Rogers), and Omaha (Eppley). TSA says more airports later. Pittsburgh started a local no-ticket gate-pass policy in 2017. Twenty-one airports already had some version of guest passes.
Our take
They spent a quarter century making your mother take her shoes off because 19 men with box cutters did a job. Tomorrow is the 25th. Today they want her at the gate with no boarding pass if she paid for PreCheck and filled out a form.
Either 9/11 was that serious, or this whole thing was a jobs program with a bin. You do not get both. You do not get "never forget" and "come eat Chili's past the magnetometer, grandma."
The 19 were not PreCheck. They had tickets. The theater was the shoes, the laptop, the belt, the 3-ounce bottle, the cop treating a toddler like a cell. Gateside is the government admitting the last 25 years were a bit. Then they will still yell at you about the liquids.
